Mets Inject Drama Into Camp, Hoping to Entertain Fans

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Spring training overflows with familiar rituals: reporting dates, fielding drills for pitchers, a manager’s first address to his team, which can be unreasonably optimistic. But there are other routines that are less familiar to fans, and one of them has played out here in recent days as Mets players have taken turns doing video promotions for the coming season.

Before or after workouts, players have put on their formal attire — their white pinstriped home uniforms — and gone through an array of video stations in the visitors’ clubhouse.

The players were asked to pose, to hold a bat or maybe a glove, to smile or perhaps not, to stand here or there. Could they do that again? Josh Edgin caught popcorn in his mouth. Wilmer Flores twirled a Hula Hoop.

For some, the routine took two hours — for good reason, or so it would seem. This is the only time of the year when the Mets’ production arm and SNY, the team’s cable channel, have extended access to players, so SNY has been shooting the various player videos it plans to sprinkle through its six-month run of regular-season games.

The Mets have also been shooting everything they plan to show on the Citi Field video scoreboard, including public service announcements and short player features.

Instead of Strike 1 or Ball 2, it has been Take 3.

“It’s just part of spring training,” Flores said, shrugging.

The taping will go on for a week and a half and will end before the exhibition games start and the visitors’ clubhouse starts filling up with opposing players. For now, the clubhouse has been transformed into a studio. The Mets have three video stations there, and SNY has one. The Mets’ main set includes a huge green screen, six large lights and a camera that looked as if it had been borrowed from Steven Spielberg.

The videos seem to carry more importance this year because Citi Field will have a new center-field video board 62 percent larger than the one it is replacing. The Mets want to impress their fans, and they think more, and better, videos will help. SNY has the same goal in mind for its many broadcasts.

So if a player is willing to give people a peek at a side of him that is not well known, all the better. Some players throw themselves into the process and have fun; others simply try to get through it unscathed.

“Random people are making faces at you,” Edgin said. “It’s like your family photographer. Every now and then, you’ll run into one that’s like, ‘Hey, say cheese!’ Yeah, O.K. I’ll say ‘cheese.’ I’m 28 years old, and I’ll say ‘cheese’ for you. O.K.”

Anthony Recker said his wife had chastised him in the past when she saw that he was not smiling on a video shown on TV or on the scoreboard. When he looks serious, he said, she thinks he looks like a jerk.

“I’m like, ‘Babe, it’s not like it was my choice,’ ” he said. “They make me do that. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

Jacob deGrom may seem to be adjusting well to his growing fame as the National League’s reigning rookie of the year, but one aspect of being a public figure still trips him up.

“Whenever I have to read a teleprompter and the camera’s on me, you can definitely tell I’m reading something,” he said. So this time around, he had someone say his lines out loud, and he repeated them.

The SNY crew has also added a dramatic effect with a smoke machine, using it with Jenrry Mejia, who became the closer last season and may keep the job. As smoke filled the room, someone instructed Mejia what to do for the camera. But there was a problem. “I can’t see,” Mejia said.

The machine was malfunctioning, and the smoke would not stop. (Mets fans can only speculate if the same thing ever happened to Mariano Rivera.)

Most players agreed that their favorite part of the tapings was being asked to engage in tricky exercises that were meant to be amusing. In one instance, the players were asked to write a word backward. In another, they had to restack cups without dropping them. In still another, a take on the game Pictionary, they were asked to draw something. Most players said they were awful. Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud claimed to be decent.

“I won’t ruin it,” said John Mayberry Jr., one of the Mets’ few off-season acquisitions. “I’ll just say if a person is able to identify what I was trying to draw, they’re a borderline Nostradamus.”

Michael Cuddyer, another new face, did a magic trick before the cameras, using Curtis Granderson as his guinea pig. Bobby Parnell seemed irked that all the songs in a music guessing game were from before his time. And Flores said he twirled his Hula Hoop for about 20 seconds. He could have kept going, he said, but someone told him to stop.

During one video feature, the players were asked to tie a tie. Syndergaard, a top pitching prospect, and Matt Harvey admitted they did not know how. Harvey asked to be excused, although Syndergaard played along. He tied the tie in a knot around his head.

“I’ll watch the video board to learn how” to tie a tie, Harvey said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Mets Inject Drama Into Camp, Hoping to Entertain Fans. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe